Bottle-to-bottle recycling process for PET bottles

PET has established itself in the beverage industry as an up-to-the-future form of packaging, and this trend is supported still further by the eco-friendly option for bottle-to-bottle recycling. Affordable production of PET beverage containers from PET recyclate enables raw material costs to be saved, and waste quantities reduced, as well as helping to cover the demand for PET bottles.
Krones offers complete PET recycling lines developed in-house. The Krones bottle-to-bottle recycling process returns the used PET bottle to its original use, by producing PET flakes, which make for short process times, low energy consumption and more affordable operating costs.
The modularised line concept has been designed for outputs of 500 kg/h or 1000 kg/h. The process features a washing module and a bottle-to-bottle module (B2B). The steps involved cover material preparation, soaking/washing/rinsing, separation into PET and polyolefines (POs), followed by mechanical/thermal drying and thick-from-thin separation, finishing with the removal of migrated constituents in a “supercleaning” function.
The Krones Bottle-to-Bottle Module has been subjected to a challenge test supervised by the German Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging, and the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The result: the recyclate produced is suitable for re-use in direct contact with foods and beverages, and complies with the FDA’s stipulations.
In the run-up to a client’s project, the tests were conducted with the user’s material on the plant’s own Krones recycling line. Preforms were produced in ratios of 50/50 and 40/60 (recyclate to new material) using the recyclate confirmed as food-grade, and the preforms thus manufactured were blow-moulded to make bottles then filled on a client’s line. The bottles produced from these preforms have exceeded the original expectations, not least in terms of their visual characteristics.